Exit Throught The Gift Shop, Please

This film is fantastic! Real or not, there is a lot to learn about street art from the film, "Exit through the Gift Shop." I feel like the first half does a great job at cataloging the beginnings of street art as an art form and not as something to be disrespected. It was important to capture that through the lens and eyes of Therrie because it shows us that there is a process, there is meaning, and we can be awestruck by what these artists make and exhibit. When he got caught up in Space Invader's art for the first time, it reminded me of when I first saw a piece on the side of a train car that was truly admirable, I get that they are vandalizing and causing several hundred to thousands of dollars in damage, but this stuff is art. I included the photo above because I feel that these artists should be given space to paint, glue and make their art. I've been in parts of cities where street art is an accepted part of the landscape like Oakland, Miami, and the wall in Gainesville, and it makes me happy to see that these otherwise ignored artists are given space to show us their talents without having to vandalize some wall. I think that perhaps to help the situation even more we could have street artists work with owners of buildings to figure out what can't be done on this wall. You could even figure out what the owner would like to see. This would be a very loose form of commission, and only to make sure nobody gets their toes stepped on.

On the other hand, that's what makes this art so cool that Mr. Brainwash failed to capture one hundred percent. It's street art. It can be painted over and almost erased and forgotten. Not all art can or should be bought and sold into private collections as Banksy kinda hinted at in the movie. When Banksy had his own show, so many missed his message and were just looking at as art for art's sake that they wanted to buy his message; the very thing he protested! At the end of the day, that elephant got cleaned off and returned to it's owner and almost everything else disappeared. While I think it's important that someone like MBW documented street artists, I don't think they need to leave behind permanent copies of their art. It loses it's impact with time, I feel, and just becomes pretty, petty art. That's not to say it's invaluable or has some sort of shelf-life, but that it is attached to something bigger that needs to be addressed and not just looked at from a different light.

The film MBW eventually created using his thousands of tapes was pretty awful. As Banksy described it, it was pretty nightmarish with as often as it flipped through various scenes of life and process. It would have worked as an intro, outro, or segway between scenes, but not as a whole film with no commentary. I guess this argues that, yeah, anybody can do art, but there is still a standard of how to do it so you don't get puked on by critics. You can't just ignore everything because you're so avant-garde or rebellious that you think you're above how art should look like. Not many people get the message you're trying to portray like that.

Anyways, it's really a great movie i whole. If you like breaking the fourth wall, this film kinda does that. You can rent it on Google Play for about 2 dollars for 2 days.